Tag: D&D

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Quotations RPG

“How can you be so calm about it?“ his younger companion protested. “We’re going to die!”

Level brown eyes stared into his. “Aye, so? We all have to, lad, but there’s nothing as says we have to behave like craven cattle first.” The old man deftly disentangled the thread and held it out. “An’ another thing,” he continued, “I’ve been in about forty o’ these little affrays before, an’ them as came to kill me haven’t quite managed the job yet. It might well take ‘em as many tries afore they get ye, too! I’ve seen it all before, lad… take heart, and be easy, I say.”

  • Ed Greenwood. “All Shadows Fled.”

A nice account of calming green soldiers about to head into their first – and perhaps last – battle.

Categories
RPG Writing

Rulfo’s Chapbook of Survival

Wonderous, rare

Description

This small, nondescript, and unlabeled chapbook has thin copper-sheet pages that are painted white, and can be written on. Each sheet has a word stamped at the top of the page. When the holder of the book smears a bit of their blood onto the stamp and speaks the word aloud the page transforms into a small metal instrument described by the world.

The book has an inscription on the inside cover that reads, “To Rulfo: May this journal keep you safe and let you record your adventures! Love, Mom.”

History

Shaerla of the Twisted Light created this chapbook for her son, Rulfo, in 1247DR when it became apparent that Rulfo was likely to prefer a life of adventuring in the wilderness to the family’s normal scholarly leanings. He travelled with it extensively during his explorations of the Sword Coast but lost it after he was attacked by the Twisty Eyeball tribe of goblins in the depths of Nightfall in 1259DR. Ever since the chapbook has reappeared periodically, passed along by adventurers, merchants, and folk of the outdoors. It was last seen in the hands of Brant of Yartar in the Year of the Lightning Strikes (1457DR) before he ventured into Sword Mountains.

Powers

The chapbook’s magics have faded over time with its use, to the point where its ability to transform sheets into useful small items can only be activated once per month. While the DM can decide what words are stamped into the pages, some words may include: dagger, grappling hook, bread knife, lock pick, bowl, helm, drinking flask, beer mug, manacles, crowbar, and hand axe. To activate a page the holder must smear a small bit of their blood onto the stamped word and simultaneously say the word on the page. After one hour the item transforms back into the copper page; it must then be reinserted into the book and can be reactivated again one month later.

(This magical item builds off an idea introduced by Ed Greenwood in his column, The Teleporting Oddity.)

Categories
RPG

Unnamed Land

A rough map for the homebrew world that I’m (slowly) developing

Categories
Links RPG

Alternative 5e Adventures – What can I play?

firstblood20:

Perhaps you can’t afford right now one of the cool campaign hardcovers like Out of the Abyss, or are just looking for something new to expand your games with. Fear not; this hobby has provided fertile soil for the creativity of enthusiasts. Here I’ll leave links that may be helpful in finding adventures for free or less than US$5. Be sure to check a module’s level before purchasing it, and remember, the PDFs are for DM eyes only!

  • Merric’s Great List of Dungeons and Dragons 5E Adventures – An amazing resource. This Australian blogger attempts to list, link and review most of the published adventures from official and third party creator alike.
    • From the many listed, may I suggest based on commentary around: The Leviathan’s Tomb ($0.99), The Blacksmith’s Burden ($3.95), The Bandit’s Nest ($2.99), A Little Bit of Thievery (PWYW), The Cry of a Daughter (Free), The Mines of Valdhum ($4.99)
  • Wizards of the Coast has begun releasing their free modules for the Adventurer’s League (AL) to the public through the Dragon+ digital magazine. These have been the ones provided so far:
    • Harried in Hillsfar – This is the intro adventure for this season of the AL, tied to the Rage of Demons story arch. It presents the central town though 5 missions, designed to last about an hour each. Later modules will connect to it. It could work as a campaign base and start. You can also check the free Player’s Guide for this season.
    • Shackles of Blood – A four hour adventure with kidnapping all around. You can also check this forum detailing how things in the adventure might go awry.
  • There are many other official AL modules given for free to subscribed game stores around that have not yet been made available. However, arcane stuff happens if you type the module’s name + pdf into Google. From the first AL season, may I suggest: The Courting of Fire, Tales Trees Tell, Dues for the Dead, and The Scroll Thief.
  • ENWorld held a small contest last year for a 5e module. You can find and download here the winner Mind Blast! and the other entries.
  • This hobby has more than 20 years of adventures and custom material. Seriously, let Google be your guide (See: Dungeon Magazine’s Top 30 D&D Adventures.) To adapt modules from previous D&D generations, you’ll need to check each of the encounters and use:
    • Kobold’s Fight Club Online Encounter Builder – An awesome tool that must be part of every 5e DM. Based on the amount of heroes and their level, it will tell you how many 5e monsters you need for an encounter of a given difficulty, and calculate XP for you. Easy.
    • The 5e Monster Manual, to look the current stats for the foes
    • Voila!

Happy Gaming.

This is really a terrific resource! Much recommended!

Categories
Links RPG

Do you: pre-made adventures?

epicroll:

I love reading through pre-made adventures for a hook or two for my main game. The only time I’ve ever run a pre-made was on Free RPG day at my local game shop – but even then I changed things up (one guy said he’d played the adventure elsewhere that day already…).

Do you use pre-made adventures or do you prefer to make your own?

I use a combination of pre-made and my own; for overall structure I tend to use the published work but then I add in ‘micro’ adventures that work out to about 30% of a campaign that are my own creations. My additions tend to focus on improving narrative arcs in the published campaign itself, to build the story arcs of individual PCs, and to develop multi-campaign themes and stories.

I used to mostly do just self-written work when I ran 2nd edition but, sadly, just don’t have that kind of time anymore if I’m going to produce adventures that I’m personally proud of and am happy with. But maybe that’ll change if I run into a published adventure/campaign in D&D(5e) that I’m unhappy with…

Categories
Quotations RPG

2015.10.16

Once, Belkram had taken a dagger through the palm of his hand. The attacking bolts felt like seven such daggers in swift succession. The pain smashed the breath out of him as the force of the striking magic missiles drove him back into an untidy heap on the ground. It was like being struck in the short ribs over and over again, Belkram thought, struggling to get his breath.

Ed Greenwood. “Cloak of Shadows.”

A great description of what being hit with magic missiles feels like!

Categories
RPG Writing

On Balancing Encounters

Over the past few days I’ve done some listening on balancing encounters in 5e D&D. In a pair of successive episodes on The Tome Show earlier in 2015, Andy, Sam, and Mike have repeatedly noted that it is far more challenging to balance encounters in a post-4e world and that, moreover, the “math is broken” in 5e D&D.

I’m sympathetic to these concerns. But as someone who admittedly always preferred the pre-CR days (i.e. 2nd Edition AD&D and earlier) I think that this is a good problem to have. I’ve always just sort of guesstimated the kind of encounter that I wanted to generate in order to advance a story and went from there; that often means that a 1st level party of 5 adventurers might be up against dozens or hundreds of opponents and that, if they don’t play very, very smart, they will all either have to flee (and hopefully not get hunted down afterwards) or perish.

I don’t tend to run what I’d consider lethal games, though it’s pretty normal for the PCs to have to retreat if they’ve adopted a bad tactical or strategic approach to engaging with an encounter. I’ve also always seen adventurers as borderline insane, insofar as they tend to run towards dangers that no normal person would ever consider to be reasonable or appropriate. Good adventurers are those that learn to think through an encounter prior to taking it on and, in some cases, recognizing when they’ve gotten themselves in too deep and the ‘adventure’ is figuring out how to extricate themselves with minimal loss of life and limb.

This isn’t to say that I, or any other DM, should or want to just hurl the world at PCs to watch them perish. Instead, it’s to say that unbalanced encounters — where the PCs cannot necessarily win, and have to simply exit the field of battle — are not inherently bad. Of course the PCs still have to succeed routinely enough that they are ‘heroes’ in their own eyes and the eyes of the peasantry/nobles/etc. But always knowing that an encounter is structured so that you can mathematically succeed just isn’t how the world tends to work and, so, I think it’s perfectly OK to develop adventures that are intentionally very dangerous. It’s been my experience that players will usually rise to the challenge and succeed in ways that I’d never considered, and part of the stories they take away from my games is the bizarre and awesome ways that they figured out how to overcome what was mathematically an ‘unbalanced’ encounter.

Categories
RPG Writing

Markdown Template for 5e Monsters

I use Ulysses to organize most of my D&D stuff; here’s the basic Markdown template I use for monsters (some additional items can be added for more advanced monsters, such as those with special abilities and spells).

# NAME

*SIZE type, alignment*

—-

**Armour Class**

**Hit Points**

**Speed**

—-

**Str** | **Dex** | **Con** | **Int** | **Wis** | **Cha**

—-

**Damage immunities**

**Condition Immunities**

**Senses** passive Perception X

**Languages**

**Challenge** X (XX XP)

—-

**Actions**

***Melee*** *Melee Weapon Attack*: +X to hit, reach X ft., X creature. *Hit*: X (XdX+X), X-type damage. (Effects)

***Range***: *Ranged Weapon Attack*: +X to hit, reach X ft., X creature. *Hit*: X (XdX+X), X-type damage.

—-

**Equipment**

Categories
RPG

Stone of Silencing

Wonderous, rare

Description

Stones of Silencing appear as dull silver balls with small grooves on one hemisphere of the sphere. They radiate a grey light for the duration of their activation

History

The Shadow Thieves are best known for developing and using these items to carry out assassinations in centuries gone past. There were originally only a few dozen created — merely for the assassins within the guild — but since then copycat wizards and spell hurlers have created (and sold) them to adventurers, nobles, and even more dangerous folk.

These items are prized by thieves and assassins and are generally feared most by spell casters. To prevent their own creations from being used against themselves, many wizards have included ways of de-activating one of their Stones of Silencing using somatic gestures. Those gestures are often closely guarded secrets and left unknown to whomever purchases one of these items from the creator.

Powers

1/day the owner can cast a Silence spell in a 10 ft. radius from the stone as an action. It lasts for 10 minutes. There is no concentration requirement and the power can be dismissed by the owner as a bonus action.

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Links RPG

See the Sketches J.R.R. Tolkien Used to Build Middle-Earth

Many of these are amazing, in that they show how one of the most adored fantasy world’s maps began just as those used in most homebrew D&D games.